Heterologous Expression in Yeast

The complex nature of plant metabolism often can seriously hinder the functional analysis of many proteins; and this has led some researchers to attempt to express such proteins in less sophisticated organisms. Unfortunately, the obvious choice, Escherichia coli , is less than ideal with many foreign peptides being misfolded and subsequently sequestered in insoluble protein bodies. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae , however, has a combination of properties that make it a particularly attractive system for the functional expression of plant proteins.